While Jon Povill and Gene Roddenberry work on Povill’s Star Trek movie script, Roddenberry and Paramount solicited scripts and pitches from some famous science fiction writers, including Harlan Ellison.

BACKGROUND

Harlan Ellison had written “City on the Edge of Forever” for the original series of Star Trek, but had fallen out with Roddenberry over changes made. Paramount did, however, ask Ellison to pitch an idea for a Star Trek movie.

PREMISE

Strange things begin occurring on Earth, a building disappears, a woman turns into a reptile-creature, one of the Great Lakes vanishes. The events all tie back to a planet on the other side of the galaxy where a race of reptilian aliens, who have discovered that the dinosaurs, creatures similar to their ancestors had died out millions of years ago and are using time travel to make sure a race similar to theirs evolved on Earth.

With the crew of the Enterprise the only people who can stop the aliens, a cloak figure (who turns out to be Kirk) travels around kidnapping the old crew, and they travel back in time. The crew then has to decide whether they have the right to stop the evolution of the reptilian race on Earth…

CANCELLATION

At the meeting where Ellison pitched the idea to Roddenberry and Paramount, producer Barry Trabulus indicated that he was a fan of Erich von Daniken’s “Chariots of the Gods” and wondered if Mayans could be included in the Pleistocene era. Ellison, not one to suffer fools gladly, pointed out that it was a stupid idea. Trabulus stated if Ellison wanted to write the film he’d include the Mayans and Ellison walked out of the meeting.

LEGACY

In 2009, Ellison offered to revive his idea for the sequel to that year’s Star Trek film, but obviously they went a different direction.